So a colleague of mine had a cold call from the group chief executive and MD from Accenture who are the IT developers for the NGE program (they have basically done everything from the consulting piece when the program was being scoped out to the technology development). They wanted to pitch a specific tech piece to him.

Long story short - the Accenture reps told them that the NGE budget has now passed $1bn and is heading towards $1.5bn or higher. My colleagues' jaws were on the floor by that time.

That is more money than WDP&R has spent on any single theme park on opening. More than the DCA makeover (just) and more than either the Dream or Fantasy.

I'd love to get a hold of the business plan that underpins this spend. WDW Co. have put a lot of their eggs in that NGE basket.

> Prioritizing resort guests to detriment of off-site and local guests by upselling to a "premium" experience that was previously free <

This is what I was afraid of. Since I have a parent that is a CM, we no longer stay on site. The "family" company wouldn't want to break up the family, right? That was rhetorical, I know they would for a buck.

But with this X-Pass nonsense, and people already admitting that they don't know how to handle CMs, APs, DVC, which means they just won't. I have been starting to prepare for "life after Disney." Where visiting my parents means, maybe we suck it up for a day or two, while we do other things in Central FL. Versus going for 2 weeks, and spending the majority of time on property.

Do you know if the registration for the New Fantasyland previews was an attempt at using some of the NGE stuff or not. Because that failed miserably. CM's couldn't register for almost a week after they got slammed the first day. The AP registrations went so bad they switched everything to a lottery. My Dad and I were like, "And they want to do this for rides and experiences?"

There are hyper-planners out there that absolutely love to schedule every moment of their vacation. They're deciding what side dishes they want with lunch 6 months in advance. I think it sucks, but I'm clearly not the target market for this stuff.

<<All of this NextGen stuff is my worst nightmare, and the money their spending on it basically guarantees it'll go to Disneyland, which I was hoping wouldn't happen.>>

The plan has always been to roll this out to DLR and DLP. DLR has always been a tough sell as it has fewer resort rooms but TDA seems to have come around to the idea....unsurprising considering the incredibly rosy profit outlook that Nick Franklin has presented to ExCom.

<<Do you know if the registration for the New Fantasyland previews was an attempt at using some of the NGE stuff or not.>>

I don't know for sure (and I'm not an IT specialist) but I've been told that the booking engine was part of Accenture's infrastructure for NGE.

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